Dr. Lea's elaborate work is the
leading modern treatment of the subject and is accepted as an authority In
Germany. See Benrath in Lit-Zeitung, 1908, pp. 203-210. The author has
brought out as never before the prominent part the confiscation of property
played in the Spanish tribunal. The work of Abbé Vacandard, the author of the Life
of St. Bernard, takes up the positions laid down in Dr. Lea's general work
on the Inquisition and attempts to break the force of his statements. Vacandard
admits the part taken by the papacy in prosecuting heresy by trial torture and
even by the death penalty, but reduces the Church's responsibility on the
ground of the ideas prevailing in the Middle Ages, and the greater freedom and
cruelty practised by the state upon its criminals. He denies that Augustine
favored severe measures of compulsion against heretics and sets forth, without
modification, the unrelenting treatment of Thomas Aquinas.

§ 58. Heretical and Unchurchly Movements.

In the 14th and 15th centuries,
the seat of heresy was shifted from Southern France and Northern Italy to
Bohemia and Northern Germany, the Netherlands and England. In Northern and
Central Europe, the papal Inquisition, which had been so effective in exterminating
the Albigenses and in repressing or scattering the Waldenses, entered upon a
new period of its history, in seeking to crush out a new enemy of the Church,
witchcraft. The rise and progress of the two most powerful and promising forms
of popular heresy, Hussitism and Lollardy, have already been traced. Other
sectarists who came under the Church's ban were the Beghards and Beguines, who
had their origin in the 13th century,877the Brethren of the Free Spirit, the Fraticelli,
the Flagellants and the Waldenses.

It is not possible to state with
exactness the differences between the Beghards, Beguines, the Brethren of the
Free Spirit and the Fraticelli as they appeared from 1300 to 1500. The names
were often used interchangeably as a designation of foes of the established
Church order.878 The court
records and other notices that have come down to us indicate that they were
represented in localities widely separated, and excited alarm which neither
their numbers nor the station of their adherents justified. The orthodox mind
was easily thrown into a panic over the deviations from the Church's system of
doctrine and government. The distribution of the dissenters proves that a
widespread religious unrest was felt in Western Christendom. They may have
imbibed some elements from Joachim of Flore's millenarianism, and in a measure
partook of the same spirit as German mysticism. There was a spiritual hunger the
Church's aristocratic discipline and its priestly ministrations did not
satisfy. The Church authorities had learned no other method of dealing with
heresy than the method in vogue in the days of Innocent III. and Innocent IV.,
and sought, as before, by imprisonments, the sword and fire, to prevent its
predatory ravages.

The Brethren of the Free Spirit879were infected with pantheistic
notions and manifested a tendency now to free thought, now to libertinism of
conduct. At times they are identified with the Beghards and Beguines. The
pantheistic element suggests a connection with Amaury of Bena or Meister
Eckart, but of this the extant records of trials furnish no distinct evidence.
To the Beghards and Beguines likewise were ascribed pantheistic tenets.

To the general class of free
thinkers belonged such individuals as Margaret of Henegouwen, usually known as
Margaret of Porete, a Beguine, who wrote a book advocating the annihilation of
the soul in God's love, and affirmed that, when this condition is reached, the
individual may, without qualm of conscience, yield to any indulgence the
appetites of nature call for. After having several times relapsed from the
faith, she was burnt, together with her books, in the Place de Grève, Paris,
1310.880 Here
belong also the Men of Reason,—homines intelligentiae,—who appeared at Brussels early in the 14th
century and were charged with teaching the final restoration of all men and of
the devil.881

The Fraticelli, also called the
Fratricelli,—the Little Brothers,—represented the opposite tendency and went to
an extravagant excess in insisting upon a rigid observance of the rule of
poverty. Originally followers of the Franciscan Observants, Peter Olivi,
Michael Cesena and Angelo Clareno, they offered violent resistance to the
decrees of John XXII., which ascribed to Christ and the Apostles the possession
of property. Some were given shelter in legitimate Franciscan convents, while
others associated themselves in schismatic groups of their own. They were active
in Italy and Southern France, and were also represented in Holland and even in
Egypt and Syria, as Gregory XI., 1375, declared; but it would be an error to
regard their number as large. In his bull, Sancta romana, issued in 1317, John XXII. spoke of "men
of the profane multitude, popularly called Fraticelli, or brethren of the poor
life, Bizochi or Beguines or known by other names." This was not the first
use of the term in an offensive sense. Villani called two men Fraticelli, a
mechanic of Parma, Segarelli and his pupil Dolcino of Novara, both of whom were
burnt, Segarelli in 1300 and Dolcino some time later. Friar Bonato, head of a
small Spiritual house in Catalonia, after being roasted on one side, proffered
repentance and was released, but afterwards, 1335, burnt alive.882 Wherever the Fraticelli appeared, they were pursued by the
Inquisition. A number of bulla of the 14th century attacked them for denying
the papal edicts and condemned them to rigorous prosecution. A formula, which
they were required to profess, ran as follows: "I swear that I believe in
my heart and profess that our Lord Jesus Christ and his Apostles, while in
mortal life, held in common the things the Scriptures describe them as having
and that they had the right of giving, selling and alienating them."

In localities they seem to have
carried their opposition to the Church so far as to set up a hierarchy of their
own.883 The
regular priests they denounced as simonists and adulterers. In places they were
held in such esteem by the populace that the Inquisition and the civil courts
found themselves powerless to bring them to trial. Nine were burnt under Urban
V. at Viterbo, and in 1389 Fra Michaele Berti de Calci, who had been successful
in making converts, met the same fate at Florence. In France also they yielded
victims to the flames, among them, Giovanni da Castiglione and Francese
d'Arquata at Montpellier, 1354, and Jean of Narbonne and Maurice at Avignon.
These enthusiasts are represented as having met death cheerfully.

Early in the 15th century, we
find the Fraticelli again the victims of the Inquisition. In 1424 and 1426,
Martin V. ordered proceedings against certain of their number in Florence and
in Spain. The vigorous propaganda of the papal preachers, John of Capistrano
and James of the Mark, succeeded in securing the return of many of these
heretics to the Church, but, as late as the reign of Paul II., 1466, they were
represented in Rome, where six of their number were imprisoned and subjected to
torture. The charges against them were the denial of the validity of papal
decrees of indulgence other than the Portiuncula decree.884 In Northern Europe the Fraticelli were classified with the
Lollards and Beghards or identified with these heretics. The term, however,
occurs seldom. Walter, the Lollard, was styled, the most wicked heresiarch of the
Fraticelli, a man full of the devil and most perverse in his errors."885

Of far more interest to this age
are the Flagellants who attracted attention by the strange outward
demonstrations in which their religious fervor found expression. Theirs was a
militant Christianity. They made an attempt to do something. They correspond
more closely to the Salvation Army of the 19th century than any other
organization of the Middle Ages. There is no record that the beating of drums
played any part in the movement, but they used popular songs, a series of
distinctive physical gestures and peculiar vociferations, uniforms and some of
the discipline of the camp. Their campaigns were penitential crusades in which
the self-mortifications of the monastery were transferred to the open field and
the public square, and were adapted to impress the impenitent to make earnest
in the warfare against the passions of the flesh. The Flagellants buffeted the
body if they did not always buffet Satan.

An account has already been
given of the first outbreak of the enthusiasm in Italy in 1259, which, starting
in Perugia, spread to Northern Italy and extended across the Alps to Austria,
Prag and Strassburg.886 Similar
outbreaks occurred in 1296, 1333, 1349, 1399, and again at the time of the
Spanish evangelist, Vincent Ferrer.

From being regarded as harmless
fanatics they came to be treated as disturbers of the ecclesiastical peace, and
in Northern Europe were classed with Beghards, Lollards, Hussites and other
unchurchly or heretical sectarists.

The movement of 1333 was led by
an eloquent Dominican, Venturino of Bergamo, and is described at length by
Villani. Ten thousand followed this leader, wearing head-bands inscribed with
the monogram of Christ, IHS, and on their chests a dove with an olive-branch in
her mouth. Venturino led his followers as far as Rome and preached on the
Capitoline. The penniless enthusiasts soon became a laughing-stock, and
Venturino, on going to Avignon, gained absolution and died in Smyrna, 1346.

The earlier exhibitions of
Flagellant zeal were as dim candlelights compared with the outbursts of 1349,
during the ravages of the Black Death, which in contemporary chronicles and the
Flagellant codes was called the great death—das grosse
Sterben, pestis grandis, mortalitas magna. Bands of religious campaigners
suddenly appeared in nearly all parts of Latin Christendom, Hungary, Bohemia,
Italy, France, Germany and the Netherlands. John du Fayt, preaching before
Clement VI., represented them as spread through all parts—per omnes provincias—and their numbers as countless.
The exact numbers of the separate bands are repeatedly given, as they appeared
in Ghent, Tournay, Dort, Bruges, Liége and other cities.887 Even bishops and princes took part in them. There were also bands
of women.

Our knowledge of the German and
Lowland Flagellants is most extensive. While the accounts of chroniclers differ
in details, they agree in the main features. The Flagellants clad themselves in
white and wore on their mantles, before and behind, and on their caps, a red
cross, from which they got the name, the Brothers of the Cross. They marched
from place to place, stopping only a single day and night at one locality,
except in case of Sunday, when they often made an exception. In the van of
their processions were carried crosses and banners. They sang hymns as they
marched. The public squares in front of churches and fields, near-by towns,
were chosen for their encampments and disciplinary drill, which was repeated
twice a day with bodies bared to the waist. A special feature was the reading
of a letter which, so it was asserted, was originally written on a table of
stone and laid by an angel on the altar of St. Peter's in Jerusalem.888 It represented Christ as indignant at the world's wickedness, and,
more especially, at the desecration of Sunday and the prevalence of usury and
adultery, but as promising mercy on condition that the Flagellants gather and
make pilgrimages of penance lasting 33½ days, a period corresponding to the
years of his earthly life.

The letter being read, the drill
began in earnest. It consisted of their falling on their knees and on the
ground three times, in scourging themselves and in certain significant gestures
to indicate to what sin each had been specially addicted. Every soldier carried
a whip, or scourge, which, as writers are careful to report, was tipped with
pieces of iron. These were often so sharp as to justify their comparison to
needles, and the blood was frequently seen trickling down the bodies of the
more zealous, even to their loins.889 The blows were executed to the rhythmic music of hymns, and the
ruddy militiamen, milites rubicundi,—as they were sometimes called, believed that the blood which they shed
was one with Christ's blood or was mixed with it. They found a patron in St.
Paul, whose stigmata they thought of, not as scars of conscience but bodily
wounds.890 At each
genuflection they sang a hymn, four hymns being sung during the progress of a
drill. The first calling to the drill began with the words: —

In falling flat on the ground,
they stretched out their arms to represent the arms of the cross. The fourth
hymn, sung at the third genuflection, was a lament over the punishment of hell
to which the Usurer, the liar, the murderer, the road-robber, the man who
neglected to fast on Friday and to keep Sunday, were condemned, and with this
was coupled a prayer to Mary.

Each penitent indicated his
besetting sin. The hard drinker put his finger to his lips. The perjurer held
up his two front fingers as if swearing an oath. The adulterer fell on his
belly. The gambler moved his hand as if in the act of throwing dice.

During the ravages of the Black Death a contingent of 120 of these
penitential warriors crossed the channel from Holland and marched through
London and other English towns, wearing red crosses and having their scourges
pointed with pieces of iron as sharp as needles.893 But they failed to secure a following.

It was inevitable that the
Flagellants should incur opposition from the Church authorities. The mediaeval
Church as little tolerated independence in ritual or organization as in
doctrine. In France, they were opposed from the first. The University of Paris
issued a deliverance against them, and Philip VI. forbade their manoeuvres on
French soil under pain of death. A harder blow was struck by the head of
Christendom, Clement VI., who fulminated his sweeping bull Oct. 20, 1349.
Flagellants starting from Basel appeared in Avignon to the number, according to
one document, of 2000. Before issuing his bull, Clement and his cardinals
listened to the sermon on the subject preached by the Paris doctor, John du
Fayt. The preacher selected 13 of the Flagellant tenets and practices for his
reprobation, including the shedding of their own blood, a practice, he
declared, fit for the priests of Baal, and the murder of Jews for their
supposed crime of poisoning the wells, in which was sought the origin of the
Black Plague. Clement pronounced the Flagellant movement a work of the devil
and the angelic letter a forgery. He condemned the warriors for repudiating the
priesthood and treating their penances as equivalent to the journey to the
jubilee in Rome, set for 1350.894 The bull was sent to the archbishops of England, France, Poland,
Germany and Sweden, and it called upon them to invoke, if necessary, the
secular arm to put down the new rebellion against the ordinances of the Church.

Against such opposition the
Flagellants could not be expected to maintain themselves long. Sharp enactments
were directed against them by the Fleming cities and by archbishops, as in Prag
and Magdeburg. Strassburg forbade public scourgings on its streets. As late as
1353, the archbishop of Cologne found it necessary to order all priests who had
favored them to confess on pain of excommunication.895

We are struck with four features
of the Flagellant movement during the Black Death,—its organization, the part
assumed in it by the laity, the use of music and, in general, its strong
religious and ethical character. In Italy, before this time, these people had
their organizations. There was scarcely an Italian city which did not have one
or more such brotherhoods. Padua had six, Perugia and Fabiano three, but the
movement does not seem to have developed opposition to Church authority. In
some of the outbreaks priests were the leaders, and the permanent organizations
seem to have formed a close association with the Dominicans and Franciscans and
to have devoted themselves to the care of the poor and sick.

On the other hand, in the North,
a spirit of independence of the clergy manifested itself. This is evident from
the Flagellant codes of the German and Dutch groups, current at the time of the
great pestilence and in after years. The conditions of membership included
reconciliation with enemies, the consent of husband or wife or, in the case of
servants, the consent of their masters, strict obedience to the leaders, who
were called master or rector, and ability to pay their own expenses. During the
campaigns, which lasted 33½ days, they were to ask no alms nor to wash their
persons or their clothing, nor cut their beards nor speak to women, nor to lie
on feather beds. They were forbidden to carry arms or to pursue the
flagellation to the limit where it might lead to sickness or death.896

Five pater nosters and ave Marias were prescribed to be said
before and after meals, and it was provided that, so long as they lived, they
should flagellate themselves every Friday three times during the day and once
at night. The associations were called brotherhoods, and the members were
bidden to call each other not chum—socium — but brother, "seeing that all were created out of
the same element and bought with the same price."897

The leaders of the fraternities
were laymen, and, as just indicated, the equality of the members before God and
the cross was emphasized. The movement was essentially a lay movement, an
expression of the spirit of dissatisfaction in Northern Germany and the
Lowlands with the sacerdotal class.898 Some of the codes condemn the worship of images, the doctrine of
transubstantiation, indulgences, priestly unction and, in cases, they
substituted the baptism of blood for water baptism. One of these, containing 50
articles, expressly declared that the body of Christ is not in the sacrament,
and that "indulgences amount to nothing and together with priests are
condemned of God." The 26th article said, "It is better to die with a
skin tanned with dust and sweat than with one smeared with a whole pound of
priestly ointment."899

The German hymns as well as the
codes of the Flagellants urge the duty of prayer and the mortification of the
flesh and the preparation for death, the abandonment of sin, the reconciliation
of enemies and the restoration of goods unjustly acquired. These sentiments are
further vouched for by the chroniclers.

To these religionists belongs
the merit of having revived the use of popular religious song. Singing was a
feature of the earliest Flagellant movement, 1259.900 Their hymns are in Latin, Italian, French, German and Dutch. In
Italian they went by the name of laude, and in German leisen. The Italian hymns, like the
German, agree that sins have brought down the judgment of God and in appealing
to the Virgin Mary, and call upon the "brethren" to castigate
themselves, to confess their sins and to live in peace and brotherhood. They
beseech the Virgin to prevail upon her son to stop "the hard death and
pestilence—Gesune tolga via l' aspra morte e pistilentia.901 Most of these hymns are filled with the thought of death and the
woes of humanity, but the appeals to Mary are full of tenderness, and every
conceivable allegory is applied to her from the dove to the gate of paradise,
from the rose to a true medicine for every sickness. The songs of the Italian
and the Northern Flagellants seem to have been independent of each other.902

The cohorts in the North agreed
in using the same penitential song at their drills, but they had a variety of
scores and songs for their marches.903 While the most of the words of their songs have been known, it is
only recently that some of the music has been found to which the Flagellants
sang their hymns. A manuscript of Hugo of Reutlingen, dating from 1349 and
discovered at St. Petersburg, gives 8 such tunes, together with the words and
an account of the movement.904 The hearers, in describing the impression made upon them by the
melodies, mention their sweetness, their orderly rhythm,—ordine
miro hymnos cantabant,—and their pathos capable of "moving hearts of stone and bringing
tears to the eyes of the most stolid."905

Altogether, the Flagellant
movement during the Black Death, 1349, must be regarded as a genuinely popular
religious movement.

The next outbreak of Flagellant
zeal, which occurred in 1399, was confined for the most part to Italy. The
Flagellants, who were distinguished by mantles with a red cross, appeared in
Genoa, Piacenza, Modena, Rome and other Italian cities. A number of accounts
have come down to us, now favorable as the account of the "notary of
Pistoja," now unfavorable as the account of von Nieheim. According to the
Pistojan writer, the movement had its origin in a vision seen by a peasant in
the Dauphiné, which is of interest as showing the relative places assigned in
the popular worship to Christ and Mary. After a midday meal, the peasant saw
Christ as a young man. Christ asked him for bread. The peasant told him there
was none left, but Christ bade him look, and behold! he saw three loaves.
Christ then bade him go and throw the loaves into a spring a short distance
off. The peasant went, and was about to obey, when a woman, clad in white and
bathed in tears, appeared, telling him to go back to the young man and say that
his mother had forbidden it. He went, and Christ repeated his command, but at
the woman's mandate the peasant again returned to Christ. Finally he threw in
one of the loaves, when the woman, who was Mary, informed him that her Son was
exceedingly angry at the sinfulness of the world and had determined to punish
it, even to destruction. Each loaf signified one-third of mankind and the
destruction of one-third was fixed, and if the peasant should cast in the other
two loaves, all mankind would perish. The man cast himself on his knees before
the weeping Virgin, who then assured him that she had prayed her Son to
withhold judgment, and that it would be withheld, provided he and others went
in processions, flagellating themselves and crying "mercy" and
"peace," and relating the vision he had seen.906

The peasant was joined by 17
others, and they became the nucleus of the new movement. The bands slept in the
convents and church grounds, sang hymns,—laude,—from which they were also called
laudesi, and scourged themselves with thongs as their
predecessors had done. Miracles were supposed to accompany their marches. Among
the miracles was the bleeding of a crucifix, which some of the accounts, as,
for example, von Nieheim's, explain by their pouring blood into a hole in the
crucifix and then soaking the wood in oil and placing it in the sun to sweat.
According to this keen observer, the bands traversed almost the whole of the
peninsula. Fifteen thousand, accompanied by the bishop of Modena, marched to
Bologna, where the population put on white. Not only were the people and clergy
of Rome carried away by their demonstrations, but also members of the sacred
college and all classes put on sackcloth and white. The pope went so far as to
bestow upon them his blessing and showed them the handkerchief of St. Veronica.
Nieheim makes special mention of their singing and their new songs —
nova carmina.
But the historian of the papal schism could see only evil and fraud in the
movement,907and condemns their lying together promiscuously
at night, men and women, boys and girls. On their marches they stripped the
trees bare of fruit and left the churches and convents, where they encamped,
defiled by their uncleanness. An end was put to the movement in Rome by the
burning of one of the leading prophets.

The bull of Clement VI. was
followed, in l372, by the fulmination of Gregory XI., who associated the
Flagellants with the Beghards, and by the action of the Council of Constance.
In a tract presented to the council in 1417, Gerson asserted that the sect made
scourging a substitute for the sacrament of penance and confession.908 He called upon the bishops to put down its cruel and sanguinary
members who dared to shed their own blood and regarded themselves as on a par
with the old martyrs. The laws of the decalogue were sufficient without the
imposition of any new burdens, as Christ himself taught, when he said, "If
thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments." This judgment of the
theologians the Flagellants might have survived, but the merciless probe of the
Inquisition to which they were exposed in the 15th century took their life.
Trials were instituted against them in Thuringia under the Dominican agent,
Schönefeld, 1414. At one place, Sangerhausen, near Erfurt, 91 were burnt at one
time and, on another occasion, 22 more. The victims of the second group died,
asserting that all the evils in the Church came from the corrupt lives of the
clergy.

The Flagellant movement grew out
of a craving which the Church life of the age did not fully meet. Excesses
should not blind the eye to its good features. Hugo of Reutlingen concludes his
account of the outbreak of 1349 with the words: "Many good things were
associated with the Flagellant brothers, and these account for the attention
they excited."

A group of sectaries, sometimes
associated by contemporary writers with the Flagellants, was known as the
Dancers. These people appeared at Aachen and other German and Dutch towns as
early as 1374. In Cologne they numbered 500. Like the Flagellants, they marched
from town to town. Their dancing and jumping—dansabant et saltabant —
they performed half naked, sometimes bound together two and two, and often in
the churches, where they had a preference for the spaces in front of the images
of the Virgin. Cases occurred where they fell dead from exhaustion. In Holland,
the Dancers were also called Frisker or Frilis, from frisch,—spry,—the
word with which they encouraged one another in their terpsichorean feats.909

To another class of religious
independents belong the Waldenses, who, in spite of their reputation as
heretics, continued to survive in France, Piedmont and Austria. They were still
accused of allowing women to preach, denying the real presence and abjuring
oaths, extreme unction, infant baptism and also of rejecting the doctrines of
purgatory and prayers for the dead.910

With occasional exceptions, the
Waldensians of Italy and France were left unmolested until the latter part of
the 15th century and the dukes of Savoy were inclined to protect them in their
Alpine abodes. But the agents of the Inquisition were keeping watch, and the
Franciscan Borelli is said to have burned, in 1393, 150 at Grenoble in the
Dauphiné in a single day. It remained for Pope Innocent VIII. to set on foot a
relentless crusade against this harmless people as his predecessor of the same
name, Innocent III., set on foot the crusade against the Albigenses. His
notorious bull of May 5, 1487, called upon the king of France, the duke of
Savoy and other princes to proceed with armed expeditions against them and to
crush them out "as venomous serpents."911 It opened with the assertion that his Holiness was moved by a
concern to extricate from the abyss of error those for whom the sovereign
Creator had been pleased to endure sufferings. The striking difference seems not
to have occurred to the pontiff that the Saviour, to whose services he
appealed, gave his own life, while he himself, without incurring any personal
danger, was consigning others to torture and death.

Writing of the crusade which
followed, the Waldensian historian, Leger, says that all his people had
suffered before was as "flowers and roses" compared to what they were
now called upon to endure. Charles VIII. entered heartily into the execution of
the decree, and sent his captain, Hugo de la Palu. The crusading armies may
have numbered 18,000 men.

The mountaineer heretics fled to
the almost inaccessible platform called Pré du Tour, where their assailants
could make no headway against their arrows and the stones they hurled. On the
French side of the Alps the crusade was successful. In the Val de Louise, 70,
or, according to another account, 3000, who had fled to the cave called Balme
de Vaudois, were choked to death by smoke from fires lit at the entrance. Many
of the Waldenses recanted, and French Waldensianism was well-nigh blotted out.
Their property was divided between the bishop of Embrun and the secular
princes. As late as 1545, 22 villages inhabited by French Waldenses were
pillaged and burnt by order of the parliament of Provence. With the unification
of Italy in 1870, this ancient and respectable people was granted toleration
and began to descend from its mountain fastnesses, where it had been confined
for the half of a millennium.

in Austria, the fortunes of the
Waldensians were more or less interwoven with the fortunes of the Hussites and
Bohemian Brethren. In parts of Northern Germany, as in Brandenburg in 1480,
members of the sect were subjected to severe persecutions. In the Lowlands we
hear of their imprisonment, banishment and death by fire.912

The mediaeval horror of heresy appears in the practice
of ascribing to heretics nefarious performances of all sorts. The terms
Waldenses and Waldensianism were at times made synonymous with witches and
witchcraft. Just how the terms Vauderie, Vaudoisie, Vaudois,
Waudenses and Valdenses came to be used in this sense has not been
satisfactorily explained. But such usage was in vogue from Lyons to Utrecht,
and the papal bull of Eugenius IV., 1440, refers to the witches in Savoy as
being called Waldenses.913 An
elaborate tract entitled the Waldensian Idolatry,914— Valdenses ydolatrae,—written
in 1460 and giving a description of its treatment in Arras, accused, the
Waldenses with having intercourse with demons and riding through the air on
sticks, oiled with a secret unguent.

§ 59. Witchcraft and its Punishment.

Perhaps no chapter in human
history is more revolting than the chapter which records the wild belief in
witchcraft and the merciless punishments meted out for it in Western Europe in
the century just preceding the Protestant Reformation and the succeeding
century.915 In the
second half of that century, the Church and society were thrown into a panic
over witchcraft, and Christendom seemed to be suddenly infested with a great
company of bewitched people, who yielded themselves to the irresistible
discipline of Satan. The mania spread from Rome and Spain to Bremen and
Scotland. Popes, lawyers, physicians and ecclesiastics of every grade yielded
their assent, and the only voices lifted up in protest which have come down to
us from the Middle Ages were the voices of victims who were subjected to
torture and perished in the flames. No Reformer uttered a word against it. On
the contrary, Luther was a stout believer in the reality of demonic agency, and
pronounced its adepts deserving of the flames. Calvin allowed the laws of
Geneva against it to stand. Bishop Jewel's sermon before Queen Elizabeth in
1562 was perhaps the immediate occasion of a new law on the subject.916 Baxter proved the reality of witchcraft in his Certainty of the
World of Spirits. On the shores of New England the delusion had its
victims, at Salem, 1692, and a century later, 1768, John Wesley, referring to
occurrences in his own time, declared that "giving up witchcraft was, in
effect, giving up the Bible."

In the establishment of the
Inquisition, 1215, Innocent III. made no mention of sorcery and witchcraft. The
omission may be explained by two considerations. Provision was made for the
prosecution of sorcerers by the state, and heretical depravity, a comparatively
novel phenomenon for the Middle Ages, was in Innocent's age regarded as the
imminent danger to which the Church was exposed.

Witchcraft was one of the forms
of maleficium, the general term adopted by
the Middle Ages from Roman usage for demonology and the dark arts, but it had
characteristic features of its own.917 These were the transport of the bewitched through the air, their
meetings with devils at the so-called sabbats and indulgence in the lowest
forms of carnal vice with them. Some of these features were mentioned in the canon episcopi,—the bishop's canon,—which
appeared first in the 10th century and was incorporated by Gratian in his
collection of canon law, 1150. But this canon treated as a delusion the belief
that wicked women were accustomed to ride together in troops through the air at
night in the suite of the Pagan goddess, Diana, into whose service they
completely yielded themselves, and this in spite of the fact that women
confessed to this affinity.918 The night-riding, John of Salisbury, d. 1182, treated as an
illusion with which Satan vexed the minds of women; but another Englishman,
Walter Map, in the same century, reports the wild orgies of demons with
heretics, to whom the devil appeared as a tom-cat.919

From the middle of the 13th
century the distinctive features of witchcraft began to engage the serious attention
of the Church authorities. During the reign of Gregory IX., 1227-1241, it
became evident to them that the devil, not satisfied with inoculating Western
Europe with doctrinal heresy, had determined to vex Christendom with a new
exhibition of his malice in works of sorcery and witchcraft. Strange cases were
occurring which the inquisitors of heresy were quick to detect. The Dominican
Chantimpré tells of the daughter of a count of Schwanenburg, who was carried
every night through the air, even eluding the strong hold of a Franciscan who
one night tried to hold her back. In 1275 a woman of Toulouse, under torture,
confessed she had indulged in sexual intercourse with a demon for many years
and given birth to a monster, part wolf and part serpent, which for two years
she fed on murdered children. She was burnt by the civil tribunal.

But it is not till the 15th
century that the era of witchcraft properly begins. From about 1430 it was
treated as a distinct cult, carefully defined and made the subject of many
treatises. The punishments to be meted out for it were carefully laid down, as
also the methods by which witches should be detected and tried. The cases were
no longer sporadic and exceptional; they were regarded as being a gild or sect
marshalled by Satan to destroy faith from the earth.

It is probable that the
responsibility for the spread of the wild witch mania rests chiefly with the
popes. Pope after pope countenanced and encouraged the belief. Not a single
utterance emanated from a pope to discourage it.920 Pope after pope called upon the Inquisition to punish witches.

The list of papal deliverances
opened in 1233, when Gregory IX., addressing the bishops of Mainz and
Hildesheim, accepted the popular demonology in its crudest forms.921 The devil, so Gregory asserted, was appearing in the shapes of a
toad, a pallid ghost and a black cat. In language too obscene to be repeated,
he described at length the orgies which took place at the meetings of men and
women with demons. Where medicines did not cure, iron and fire were to be used.
The rotting flesh was to be cut out. Did not Elijah slay the four hundred
priests of Baal and Moses put idolaters to death?

Before the close of the 13th
century, popes themselves were accused of having familiar spirits and
practising sorcery, as John XXI., 1276, and Boniface VIII. Boniface went so
far, 1303, as to order the trial of an English bishop, Walter of Coventry and
Lichfield, on the charge of having made a pact with the devil and habitually
kissing the devil's posterior parts. Under his successor, Clement, the gross
charges of wantonness with the devil were circulated against the Knights of the
Temple. In his work, De maleficiis, Boniface VIII.'s physician, Arnold of Villanova, stated with scientific
precision the satanic devices for disturbing and thwarting the marital
relation. Among the popes of the 14th century, John XXII. is distinguished for
the credit he gave to all sorts of malefic arts and his instructions to the
inquisitors to proceed against persons in league with the devil.922

Side by side with the papal
utterances went the authoritative statements of the Schoolmen. Leaning upon
Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, d. 1274, accepted as real the cohabitation of human
beings with demons, and declared that old women had the power by the glance of
their eye of injecting into young people a certain evil essence. If the
horrible beliefs of the Middle Ages on the subject of witchcraft are to be set
aside, then the bulls of Leo XIII. and Pius X.923pronouncing Thomas the
authoritative guide of Catholic theology must be modified.

The definitions of the Schoolmen
justified the demand which papal deliverances made, that the Church tribunal
has at least equal jurisdiction with the tribunal of the state in ferreting out
and prosecuting the adepts of the dark arts. Manuals of procedure in cases of
sorcery used by the Inquisition date back at least to 1270.924 The famous Interrogatory of Bernard Guy of 1320 contains formulas
on the subject. The canonists, however, had difficulty in defining the point at
which maleficium
became a
capital crime. Oldradus, professor of canon law in turn at Bologna, Padua and
Avignon, sought, about 1325, to draw a precise distinction between the two, and
gave the opinion that, only when sorcery savors strongly of heresy, should it
be dealt with as heresy was dealt with, the position assumed before by
Alexander IV., 1258-1260. The final step was taken when Eymericus, in his
Inquisitorial Directory and special tracts, 1370-1380, affirmed the close
affinity between maleficium
and heresy, and
threw the door wide open for the most rigorous measures against malefics.

To such threefold authorization
was added the weight of the great influence of the University of Paris, which,
in 1378, two years after the issue of Eymericus' work, sent out 28 articles
affirming the reality of maleficium.

Proceeding to the second period
in the history of our subject, beginning with 1430, it is found to teem with
tracts and papal deliverances on witchcraft.

Gerson, the leading theologian
of his age, said it was heresy and impiety to question the practice of the
malefic arts, and Eugenius IV., in several deliverances, beginning with 1434,
spoke in detail of those who made pacts with demons and sacrificed to them.925 Witchcraft was about to take the place in men's minds which heresy
had occupied in the age of Innocent III. The frightful mania was impending
which spread through Latin Christendom under the Renaissance popes, from Pius
II. to Clement VII., and without a dissenting voice received their sanction. Of
the Humanist, Pius II., better things might have been expected, but he also, in
1459, fulminated against the malefics of Brittany. To what length the Vatican
could go in sanctioning the crassest superstition is seen from Sixtus IV.'s
bull, 1471, in which that pontiff reserved to himself the right to manufacture
and consecrate the little waxen figures of lambs, the touch of which was
pronounced to be sufficient to protect against fire and shipwreck, storm and
hail, lightning and thunder, and to preserve women in the hour of parturition.926

Among the documents on
witchcraft, emanating from papal or other sources, the place of pre-eminence is
occupied by the bull, Summis desiderantes issued by Innocent VIII., 1484. This notorious proclamation, consisting
of nearly 1000 words, was sent out in answer to questions proposed to the papal
chair by German inquisitors, and recognizes in clearest language the current
beliefs about demonic bewitchment as undeniable. It had come to his knowledge,
so the pontiff wrote, that the dioceses of Mainz, Cologne, Treves, Salzburg and
Bremen teemed with persons who, forsaking the Catholic faith, were consorting
with demons. By incantations, conjurations and other iniquities they were
thwarting the parturition of women and destroying the seed of animals, the
fruits of the earth, the grapes of the vine and the fruit of the orchard. Men
and women, flocks and herds, trees and all herbs were being afflicted with pains
and torments. Men could no longer beget, women no longer conceive, and wives
and husbands were prevented from performing the marital act. In view of these
calamities, the pope authorized the Dominicans, Heinrich Institoris and Jacob
Sprenger, professors of theology, to continue their activity against these
malefics in bringing them to trial and punishment. He called upon the bishop of
Salzburg to see to it that they were not impeded in their work and, a few
months later, he admonished the archbishop of Mainz to give them active
support. In other documents, Innocent commended Sigismund, archbishop of
Austria, the count of the Tyrol and other persons for the aid they had rendered
to these inquisitors in their effort to crush out witchcraft.

The burning of witches was thus
declared the definite policy of the papal see and the inquisitors proceeded to
carry out its instructions with untiring and merciless severity.927

Innocent's communication, so
abhorrent to the intelligent judgment of modern times, would seem of itself to
sweep away the dogma of papal infallibility, even if there were no cases of
Liberius, the Arian, or Honorius, the Monothelite. The argument is made by
Pastor and Cardinal Hergenröther that Innocent did not officially pronounce on
the reality of witchcraft when, proceeding upon the basis of reports, he
condemned it and ordered its punishment.928 However, in case this explanation be not regarded as sufficient,
these writers allege that the decision, being of a disciplinary nature, would
have no more binding force than any other papal decision on non-dogmatic
subjects. This distinction is based upon the well-known contention of Catholic
canonists that the pope's inerrancy extends to matters of faith and not to
matters of discipline. Leaving these distinctions to the domain of theological
casuistry, it remains a historic fact that Innocent's bull deepened the hold of
a vicious belief in the mind of Europe and brought thousands of innocent
victims to the rack and to the flames. The statement made by Dr. White is
certainly not far from the truth when he says that, of all the documents which
have issued from Rome, imperial or papal, Innocent's bull first and last cost
the greatest suffering.929 Innocent
might have exercised his pontifical infallibility in denying, or at least
doubting, the credibility of the witnesses. A simple word from him would have
prevented untold horrors. No one of his successors in the papal chair has
expressed any regret for his deliverance, much less consigned to the Index of
forbidden books the Malleus maleficarum, the inquisitors' official text-book on witchcraft, most of the editions
of which printed Innocent's bull at length.

Innocent's immediate successors
followed his example and persons or states opposing repressive measures against
witches were classed with malefactors and, as in the case of Venice, the state
was threatened by Leo X. with the fulminations of the Church if it did not
render active assistance. At the papal rebuke, Brescia changed its attitude and
in a single year sentenced 70 to the flames.

Next to Innocent's bull, the Witches
Hammer,—Malleus
maleficarum,—already
referred to, is the most important and nefarious legacy the world has received
on witchcraft. Dr. Lea pronounces it "the most portentous monument of
superstition the world has produced."930 These two documents were the official literature which determined
the progress and methods of the new crusade.

The Witches Hammer,
published in 1486, proceeded from the hands of the Dominican Inquisitors,
Heinrich Institoris, whose German name was Kraemer, and Jacob Sprenger. The
plea cannot be made that they were uneducated men. They occupied high positions
in their order and at the University of Cologne. Their book is divided into
three parts: the first proves the existence of witchcraft; the second sets
forth the forms in which it manifested itself; the third describes the rules
for its detection and prosecution. In the last quarter of the 15th century the
world, so it states, was more given over to the devil than in any preceding
age. It was flooded with all kinds of wickedness. In affirming the antics of
witches and other malefics, appeal is made to the Scriptures and to the
teachings of the Church and especially to Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Witches
and sorcerers, whose father is the devil, are at last bound together in an
organized body or sect. They meet at the weekly sabbats and do the devil homage
by kissing his posterior parts. He appears among them as a tom-cat, goat, dog,
bull or black man, as whim and convenience suggest. Demons of both sexes swarm
at the meetings. Baptism and the eucharist are subjected to ridicule, the cross
trampled upon. After an abundant repast the lights are extinguished and, at the
devil's command "Mix, mix," there follow scenes of unutterable
lewdness. The devil, however, is a strict disciplinarian and applies the whip
to refractory members.

The human members of the
fraternity are instructed in all sorts of fell arts. They are transported
through the air. They kill unbaptized children, keeping them in this way out of
heaven. At the sabbats such children are eaten. Of the carnal intercourse,
implied in the words succubus and
incubus, the authors say, there can be
no doubt. To quote them, "it is common to all sorcerers and witches to
practise carnal lust with demons."931 To this particular subject are devoted two full chapters, and it
is taken up again and again.

In evidence of the reality of
their charges, the authors draw upon their own extensive experience and declare
that, in 48 cases of witches brought before them and burnt, all the victims
confessed to having practised such abominable whoredoms for from 10 to 30
years.

Among the precautions which the
book prescribed against being bewitched, are the Lord's Prayer, the cross, holy
water and salt and the Church formulas of exorcism. It also adds that inner
grace is a preservative.932

The directions for the
prosecution of witches, given in the third part of the treatise, are set forth
with great explicitness. Public rumor was a sufficient cause for an indictment.
The accused were to be subjected to the indignity of having the hair shaved off
from their bodies, especially the more secret parts, lest perchance some imp or
charm might be hidden there. Careful rules were given to the inquisitors for
preserving themselves against being bewitched, and Institoris and Sprenger took
occasion to congratulate themselves that, in their long experience, they had
been able to avoid this calamity. In case the defender of a witch seemed to
show an excess of zeal, this was to be treated as presumptive evidence that he
was himself under the same influence. One of the devices for exposing guilt was
a sheet of paper of the length of Christ's body, inscribed with the seven words
of the cross. This was to be bound on the witch's body at the time of the mass,
and then the ordeal of torture was applied. This measure almost invariably
brought forth a confession of guilt. The ordeal of the red-hot iron was also
recommended, but it was to be used with caution, as it was the trick of demons
to cover the hands of witches with a salve made from a vegetable essence which
kept them from being burnt. Such a case happened in Constance, the woman being
able to carry the glowing iron six paces and thus going free.

Of all parts of this manual,
none is quite so infamous as the author's vile estimate of woman. If there is
any one who still imagines that celibacy is a sure highway to purity of
thought, let him read the testimonies about woman and marriage given by
mediaeval writers, priests and monks, themselves celibate and presumably
chaste. Their impurities of expression suggest a foul atmosphere of thought and
conversation. The very title of the Malleus maleficarum—the Hammer of the Female
Malefics—is in the feminine because, as the authors inform their readers,
the overwhelming majority of those who were behagged and had intercourse with
demons were women.933 In flat
contrast to our modern experience of the religious fidelity of women, the
authors of this book derive the word femina — woman—from fe and minus, that is, fides minus, less in faith. Weeping and
spinning and deceiving they represent as the very essence of her nature. She
deceives, because she was formed from Adam's rib and that was crooked.

A long chapter, I. 6, is devoted
to showing woman's inferiority to man and the subject of her alliance with
demons is dwelt upon, apparently with delight. The cohabitation with fiends was
in earlier ages, the authors affirm, against the will of women, but in their
own age it was with their full consent and by their ardent desire. They thank
God for being men. Few of their sex, they say, consent to such obscene
relations,—one man to ten women. This refusal was due to the male's natural
vigor of mind, vigor
rationis. To
show the depravity of woman and her fell agency in history, Institoris and
Sprenger quote all the bad things they can heap up from authors, biblical and
classic, patristic and scholastic, Cato, Terence, Seneca, Cicero, Jerome. Jesus
Sirach's words are frequently quoted, "Woman is more bitter than
death." Helen, Jezebel and Cleopatra are held forth as examples of
pernicious agency which wrought the destruction of kingdoms, such catastrophes
being almost invariably due to woman's machinations.

It was the common representation
of the writers of the outgoing century of the Mediaeval Age that God permits
the intervention of Satan's malefic agency through the marriage bed more than
through any other medium, and for the reason that the first sin was carried
down through the marital act. On this point, Thomas Aquinas is quoted by one
author after the other.934 Preachers, as well as writers on witchcraft, took this disparaging
view of woman. Geiler of Strassburg gave as the reason for ten women being
burnt to one man on the charge of witchcraft, woman's loquacity and frivolity.
He quoted Ambrose that woman is the door to the devil and the way of iniquity—janua diaboli et via iniquitatis. Another noted preacher of the
15th century, John Nider, gave ten cases in which the cohabitation of man and
woman is a mortal sin and, in a Latin treatise on moral leprosy, included the
marriage state.935 A century
earlier, in his De
planctu ecclesiae, written from Avignon, Bishop Alvarez of Pelayo enumerated 102 faults
common to women, one of these their cohabitation with the denizens of hell.
From his own experience, the prelate states, he knew this to be true. It was
practised, he says, in a convent of nuns and vain was his effort to put a stop
to it.

Experts gave it as their opinion
that "the new sect of witches" had its beginning about the year 1300.936 But the writers of the 15th and 16th centuries were careful to
prove that their two characteristic performances, the flight through the air
and demonic intercourse, were not illusions of the imagination, but palpable
realities.937 To the
testimonies of the witches themselves were added the ocular observations of
church officials.938 Other
devilish performances dwelt upon, were the murder of children before baptism,
the eating of their flesh after it had been consecrated to the devil and the
trampling upon the host.939 One
woman, in 1457, confessed she had been guilty of the last practice 30 years.

The more popular places of the
weekly sabbats were the Brocken, Benevento, Como and the regions beyond the
Jordan. Here the witches and demons congregated by the thousands and committed
their excesses. The witches went from congregation to congregation as they
pleased940and, according to Prierias, children as young as
eight and ten joined in the orgies.

Sometimes it went hard with the
innocent, though prurient, onlookers of these scenes, as was the case with the
inquisitor of Como, Bartholomew of Homate, and some of his companions.
Determined to see for themselves, they looked on at a sabbat in Mendrisio from
a place of concealment. As if unaware of their presence, the presiding devil
dismissed the assembly, but immediately calling the revellers back, had them
drag the intruders forth and the demons belabored them so lustily that they
survived only 15 days.941 The forms
the devil usually assumed were those of a large tom-cat or a goat. If the
meeting was in a building, he was wont to descend by a ladder, tail foremost.
The witches kissed his posterior parts and, after indulging in a feast, the
lights were put out and wild revels followed. As early as 1460, pictures were
printed representing women riding through the air, straddling stocks and
broomsticks, on goats or carried by demons. In Normandy, the obsessed were called
broom-riders—scobaces.942 Taught by demons, they made a salve of the ashes of a toad fed on
the wafer, the blood of murdered children and other ingredients, which they
applied to their riding sticks to facilitate their flights. According to the
physician, John Hartlieb, who calls this salve the "unguent of
Pharelis"—Herodias—it was made from seven different herbs, each gathered
on a different day of the week and mixed with the fat of birds and animals.943

The popularity of the
witch-delusion as a subject of literary treatment is shown by the extracts
Hansen gives from 70 writings, without exhausting the list.944 Most of the writers were Dominicans. The Witches Hammer was
printed in many editions, issued 13 times before 1520 and, from 1574-1669, 16
times. The most famous of these writers in the earlier half of the 15th century
was John Nider, d. 1438, in his Formicarius or Ant-Industry. He was a
member of the Dominican order, professor of theology in Vienna and attended the
Council of Basel. Writers like Jacquier were not satisfied with sending forth a
single treatise.945 Writers
like Sylvester Prierias, d. 1523, known in the history of Luther, and
Bartholomew Spina, d. 1546, occupied important positions at the papal court.946 These two men expounded Innocent VIII.'s bull, and quote the Witches
Hammer. Geiler of Strassburg repeated from the pulpit the vilest charges against
witches. Pico della Mirandola, the biographer of Savonarola, filled a book with
material of the same sort, and declared that one might as well call in question
the discovery of America as the existence of witches.947

The prosecution of witches
assumed large proportions first in Switzerland and Northern Italy and then in
France and Germany. In Rome, the first reported burning was in 1424.948 In the diocese of Como, Northern Italy, 41 were burnt the year
after the promulgation of Innocent VIII.'s bull. Between 1500-1525 the yearly
number of women tried in that district was 1000 and the executions averaged
100. In 1521, Prierias declared that the Apennine regions were so full of
witches that they were expected soon to outnumber the faithful.

In France, one of the chief
victims, the Carmelite William Adeline, was professor in Paris and had taken
part in the Council of Basel. Arraigned by the Inquisition, 1453, he confessed
to being a Vaudois, and having habitually attended their synagogues and done
homage to the devil. In spite of his abjurations, he was kept in prison till he
died.949 In
Briançon, 1428-1447, 110 women and 57 men were executed for witchcraft in the
flames or by drowning.

In Germany, Heidelberg,
Pforzheim, Nürnberg, Würzburg, Bamberg, Vienna, Cologne, Metz and other cities
were centres of the craze and witnessed many executions. It was during the five
years preceding 1486 that Heinrich Institoris and Sprenger sent 48 to the
stake. The Heidelberg court-preacher, Matthias Widman, of Kemnat, pronounced
the "Cathari or heretical witches" the most damnable of the sects,
one which should be subjected to "abundance of fire and without
mercy." He reports that witches rode on broomsticks, spoons, cats, goats
and other objects, and that he had seen many of them burnt in Heidelberg. In
1540, six years before Luther's death, four witches and sorcerers were burnt in
Protestant Wittenberg. And in 1545, 34 women were burnt or quartered in Geneva.
In England the law for the burning of heretics, 1401, was applied to these
unfortunate people, not a few of whom were committed to the flames. But the
persecution in the mediaeval period never took on the proportions on English
soil it reached on the Continent; and there, it was not the Church but the
state that dealt with the crime of sorcery.

According to the estimate of
Louis of Paramo, himself a distinguished inquisitor of Sicily who had condemned
many to the flames, there had been during the 150 years before 1597, the date
of his treatise on the Origin and Progress of the Inquisition, 30,000
executions for witchcraft.950

The judgments passed upon
witches were whipping, banishment and death by fire, or, as in Cologne,
Strassburg and other places, by drowning. The most common forms of torture were
the thumb-screw and the strappado. In the latter the prisoner's hands were
bound behind his back with a rope which was drawn through a pulley in the
ceiling. The body was slowly lifted up, and at times left hanging or allowed to
suddenly drop to the floor. In our modern sense, there was no protection of law
for the accused. The suspicion of an ecclesiastical or civil court was sufficient
to create an almost insurmountable presumption of guilt. Made frantic by the
torture, the victims were willing to confess to anything, however untrue and
repulsive it might be. Death at times must have seemed, even with the Church's
ban, preferable to protracted agonies, for the pains of death at best lasted a
few hours and might be reduced to a few minutes. As Lecky has said, these
unfortunate people did not have before them the prospect of a martyr's crown
and the glory of the heavenly estate. They were not buoyed up by the sympathies
and prayers of the Church. Unpitied and unprayed for, they yielded to the cold
scrutiny of the inquisitor and were consumed in the flames.

Persons who took the part of the
supposed witch, or ventured to lift up their voices against the trials for
witchcraft, did so at the risk of their lives. In 1598, the Dutch priest,
Cornelius Loos Callidus, was imprisoned at Treves for declaring that women,
making confession under torture to witch devices, confessed to what was not true.
And four years before, 1589, Dr. Dietrich Flade, a councillor of Treves, was
burnt for attacking the prosecution of witchcraft.951

The belief in demonology and all
manner of malefic arts was a legacy handed down to the Church from the old
Roman world and, where the influence of the Northern mythologies was felt, the
belief took still deeper roots. But it cannot be denied that cases and passages
taken from the Scriptures, especially the Old Testament, were adduced to
justify the wild dread of malign spirits in the Middle Ages. Saul's experience
with the witch of Endor, the plagues brought by the devil upon Job, the
representations in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, incidents from the Apocrypha and
the cases of demonic agency in the New Testament were dwelt upon and applied
with literal and relentless rigor.

It is a long chapter which
begins with the lonely contests the old hermits had with demons, recounts the
personal encounters of mediaeval monks in chapel and cell and relates the
horrors of the inquisitorial process for heresy. Our more rational processes of
thought and our better understanding of the Christian law of love happily have
brought this chapter to a close in enlightened countries. The treatment here
given has been in order to show how greatly a Christian society may err, and to
confirm in this generation the feeling of gratitude for the better sentiments
which now prevail. It is perhaps also clue to those who suffered, that a
general description of the injustice done them should be given. The chapter may
not unfitly be brought to a close by allowing one of the victims to speak again
from his prison-cell, the burgomaster of Bamberg, though he suffered a century
after the Middle Ages had closed, 1628. After being confronted by false
witnesses he confessed, under torture, to having indulged in the practices
ascribed to the bewitched and he thus wrote to his daughter: —

Many hundred good nights, dearly
beloved daughter, Veronica. Innocent have I come into prison, innocent must I
die. For whoever comes into a witch-prison must become a witch or be tortured
till he invents something out of his head and—God pity him—bethinks himself of
something. I will tell you how it has gone with me .... Then came the
executioner and put the thumbscrews on me, both hands bound together, so that
the blood ran out at the nails and everywhere, so that for four weeks I could
not use my hands, as you can see from the writing .... Then they stripped me,
bound my hands behind my back and drew me up. I thought heaven and earth were
at an end. Eight times did they do this and let me drop again so that I
suffered terrible agony .... [Here follows a rehearsal of the confessions he
was induced to make.] ... Now, dear child, you have all my confessions for
which I must die. They are sheer lies made up. All this I was forced to say
through fear of the rack, for they never leave off the torture till one
confesses something .... Dear child, keep this letter secret so that people may
not find it or else I shall be tortured most piteously and the jailers be
beheaded .... I have taken several days to write this for my hands are both
lame. Good night, for your father Johannes Junius will never see you more.952

The Inquisition of Spain is one
of the bywords of history. The horrors it perpetrated have cast a dark shadow
over the pages of Spanish annals. Organized to rid the Spanish kingdoms of the
infection of heresy, it extended its methods to the Spanish dependencies in
Europe, Sicily and Holland and to the Spanish colonies of the new world. After
the marriage of Philip II. with Mary Tudor it secured a temporary recognition
in England. In its bloody sacrifices, Jews, Moors, Protestants and the
practitioners of the dark arts were included. No country in the world was more
concerned to maintain the Catholic faith pure than was Spain from the 15th to
the 18th century, and to no Church organization was a more unrestricted
authority given than to the Spanish Inquisition. Agreeing with the papal
Inquisition established by Innocent III. in its ultimate aim, the eradication
of heresy, it differed from that earlier institution by being under the
direction of a tribunal appointed by the Spanish sovereign, immediately amenable
to him and acting independently of the bishops. The papal Inquisition was
controlled by the Apostolic see, which appointed agents to carry its rules into
effect and whose agency was to a certain extent subject to the assent of the
bishops.

Engaged in the wars for the
dispossession of the Pagan Moors, the Spanish kingdoms had shown little
disposition to yield to the intrusion of Catharan and other heresy from the
North. The menace to its orthodox repose came from the Jews, Jews who held
firmly to their ancestral faith and Jews who had of their own impulse or
through compulsion adopted the Christian rites. In no part of Europe was the
number of Jews so large and nowhere had they been more prosperous in trade and
reached such positions of eminence as physicians and as counsellors at court.
The Jewish literature of mediaeval Spain forms a distinct and notable chapter
in Hebrew literary history. To rid the land of the Jews who persisted in their
ancestral belief was not within the jurisdiction of the Church. That belonged
to the state, and, according to the canon law, the Jew was not to be molested
in the practice of his religion. But the moment Jews or Moors submitted to
baptism they became amenable to ecclesiastical discipline. Converted Jews in
Spain were called conversos, or maranos —
the newly converted—and it was with them, in its first period, that the Spanish
Inquisition had chiefly to do. After Luther's doctrines began to spread it
addressed itself to the extirpation of Protestants, but, until the close of its
history, in 1834, the Jewish Christians constituted most of its victims.

From an early time Spanish
legislation was directed to the humiliation of the Jews and their segregation
from the Christian population. The oecumenical Council of Vienne, 1312, denounced
the liberality of the Spanish law which made a Jewish witness necessary to the
conviction of a Jew. Spanish synods, as those of Valladolid and Tarragona,
1322, 1329, gave strong expression to the spirit of intolerance with which the
Spanish church regarded the Jewish people. The sacking and wholesale massacre
of their communities, which lived apart in quarters of their own called
Juderias, were matters of frequent occurrence, and their synagogues were often
destroyed or turned into churches. It is estimated that in 1391, 50,000 Jews
were murdered in Castile, and the mania spread to Aragon.954

The explanation of this bitter
feeling is to be sought in the haughty pride of the descendants of Abraham
according to the flesh, their persistent observance of their traditions and the
exorbitant rates of usury which they charged. Not content with the legal rate,
which in Aragon was 20% and in Castile 331/3% they often compelled
municipalities to pay even higher rates. The prejudice and fears of the
Christian population charged them with sacrilege in the use of the wafer and
the murder of baptized children, whose blood was used in preparations made for
purposes of sorcery. Legislation was made more exacting. The old rules were enforced
enjoining a distinctive dress and forbidding them to shave their beards or to
have their hair cut round. All employment in Christian households, the practice
of medicine and the occupation of agriculture were denied them. Scarcely any
trade was left to their hand except the loaning of money, and that by canon law
was illegal for Christians.

The joint reign of Ferdinand,
1452-1516, and Isabella, 1451-1504, marked an epoch in the history of the Jews
in Spain, both those who remained true to their ancestral faith and the large
class which professed conversion to the Christian Church.955

In conferring the title
"Catholic" upon Ferdinand and Isabella, 1495, Alexander VI. gave as
one of the reasons the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, 1492. The institution
of the Spanish Inquisition, which began its work twelve years before, was
directed primarily against the conversos, people of Jewish blood and
members of the Church who in heart and secret usage remained Jews.

The papal Inquisition was never
organized in Castile, and in Aragon it had a feeble existence. With the council
of Tortosa, 1429, complaints began to be made that the conversos neglected
to have their children baptized, and by attending the synagogues and observing
the Jewish feasts were putting contempt upon their Christian faith. That such
hypocrisy was practised cannot be doubted in view of the action of the Council
of Basel which put its brand upon it. In 1451 Juan II. applied to the papal
court to appoint a commission to investigate the situation. At the same time
the popular feeling was intensified by the frantic appeals of clerics such as
Friar Alfonso de Espina who in his Fortalicium fidei — the Fortification of the Faith—brought together
a number of alleged cases of children murdered by Jews and argued for the
Church's right to baptize Jewish children in the absence of the parents'
consent.956 The story
ran that before Isabella's accession her confessor Torquemada, that hammer of
heretics, secured from her a vow to leave no measure untried for the
extirpation of heresy from her realm. Sometime later, listening to this same
ecclesiastic's appeal, Ferdinand and his consort applied to the papal see for
the establishment of the Inquisition in Castile.

Sixtus IV., who was then
occupying the chair of St. Peter, did not hesitate in a matter so important,
and on Nov. 1, 1478, issued the bull sanctioning the fell Spanish tribunal. It
authorized the Spanish sovereigns to appoint three bishops or other
ecclesiastics to proceed against heretics and at the same time empowered them
to remove and replace these officials as they thought fit. After a delay of two
years, the commission was constituted, 1480, and consisted of two Dominican
theologians, Michael de Morillo and John of St. Martin, and a friar of St.
Pablo, Seville. A public reception was given to the commission by the municipal
council of Seville. The number of prisoners was soon too large for the capacity
of St. Pablo, where the court first established itself, and it was removed to
the chief stronghold of the city, the fortress of Triana, whose ample spaces
and gloomy dungeons were well fitted for the dark work for which it had been
chosen.

Once organized, the Inquisition
began its work by issuing the so-called Edict of Grace957which gave heretics a period of
30 or 40 days in which to announce themselves and, on making confession,
assured them of pardon. Humane as this measure was, it was also used as a
device for detecting other spiritual criminals, those confessing, called penitentes,
being placed under a vow to reveal the names of heretics. The humiliations to
which the penitents were subjected had exhibition at the first auto de fe held in Toledo, 1486, when 750 penitents of both sexes were obliged to
march through the city carrying candles and bare-headed; and, on entering the
cathedral, were informed that one-fifth of their property had been confiscated,
and that they were thenceforth incapacitated to hold public office. The first auto de fe was held in Seville, Feb. 6, 1481, six months after the appointment of
the tribunal, when six men and women were cremated alive. The ghastly spectacle
was introduced with a sermon, preached by Friar Alfonso de Hojeda. A disastrous
plague, which broke out in the city, did not interrupt the sittings of the
tribunal, which established itself temporarily at Aracena, where the first
holocaust included 23 men and women. According to a contemporary, by Nov. 4,
1491, 298 persons had been committed to the flames and 79 condemned to
perpetual imprisonment.958 The
tribunal established at Ciudad Real, 1483, burnt 52 heretics within two years,
when it was removed, in 1485, to Toledo. In Avila, from 1490-1500, 75 were
burnt alive, and 26 dead bodies exhumed and cast into the flames. In cases, the
entire conversos population was banished, as in Guadalupe, by the
order of the inquisitor-general, Deza, in 1500. From Castile, the Inquisition
extended its operations to Aragon, where its three chief centres were Valencia,
Barcelona and Saragossa, and then to the Balearic Islands, where it was
especially active. The first burning in Saragossa took place, 1484, when two
men were burnt alive and one woman in effigy, and at Barcelona in 1488, when
four persons were consumed alive.

The interest of Sixtus IV.
continued to follow the tribunal he had authorized and, in a letter addressed
to Isabella, Feb. 13, 1483, he assured the queen that its work lay close to his
heart. The same year, to render the tribunal more efficient, it was raised by
Ferdinand to the dignity of the fifth council of the state with the title, Concejo de la Suprema y General Inquisicion. Usually called the suprema,
this body was to have charge of the Holy Office throughout the realm. The same
end was promoted by the creation of the office of inquisitor-general, 1483, to which
the power was consigned of removing and appointing inquisitorial functionaries.
The first incumbent was Thomas de Torquemada, at that time prior of Santa Cruz
in Segovia. This fanatical ecclesiastic, whose name is a synonym of
uncompromising religious intolerance and heartless cruelty, had already been
appointed, in 1482, an inquisitor by the pope. He brought to his duties a rare
energy and formulated the rules characteristic of the Spanish Inquisition.

With Torquemada at its head, the
Holy Office became, next to royalty itself, the strongest power in Spain. Its
decisions fell like the blow of a great iron hammer, and there was no power
beneath the sovereign that dared to offer them resistance. In 1507, at the
death of Deza, third inquisitor-general, Castile and Aragon were placed under
distinct tribunals. Cardinal Ximenes, 1436-1517, a member of the Franciscan
order and one of the foremost figures in Spanish church history, was elevated
to the office of supreme inquisitor of Castile. His distinction as archbishop
of Toledo pales before his fame as a scholar and patron of letters. He likewise
was unyielding in the prosecution of the work of ridding his country of the
taint of heresy, but he never gave way to the temptation of using his office
for his own advantage and enriching himself from the sequestrated property of
the conversos, as Torquemada was charged with doing.

Under Adrian of Utrecht, at
first inquisitor-general of Aragon, the tribunals of the two kingdoms were
again united in 1518, and, by the addition of Navarre, which Ferdinand had
conquered, the whole Iberian peninsula, with the exception of Portugal, came
under the jurisdiction of a single supreme official. Adrian had acted as tutor
to Charles V., and was to succeed Leo X. on the papal throne. From his
administration, the succession of inquisitors-general continued unbroken till
1835, when the last occupant of the office died, Geronimo Castellan y Salas,
bishop of Tarazona.959

The interesting question has
been warmly discussed, whether the Inquisition of Spain was a papal institution
or an institution of the state, and the attempt has been made to lift the
responsibility for its organization and administration from the supreme pontiff.
The answer is, that it was predominantly an ecclesiastical institution, created
by the authority of Sixtus IV. and continuously supported by pontifical
sanction. On the other hand, its establishment was sought after by Ferdinand
and Isabella, and its operations, after the papal authorization had been
secured, was under the control of the Spanish sovereign. So far as we know, the
popes never uttered a word in protest against the inhuman measures which were
practised by the Spanish tribunals. Their only dissent arose from the
persistence with which Ferdinand kept the administrative agency in his own
hands and refused to allow any interference with his disposition of the
sequestrated estates.960 The
hearty approbation of the Apostolic see is vouched for in many documents, and
the responsibility for the Spanish tribunal was distinctly assumed by Sixtus
V., Jan. 22, 1588, as an institution established by its authority. Sixtus IV.
and his successors sought again and again to get its full management into their
own hands, but were foiled by the firmness of Ferdinand. When, for example, in
a bull dated April 18, 1482, the pope ordered the names of the witnesses and
accusers to be communicated to the suspects, that the imprisonments should be
in episcopal gaols, that appeal might be taken to the Apostolic chair and that
confessions to the bishop should stop all prosecution, Ferdinand sharply
resented the interference and hinted that the suggestion had started with the
use of conversos gold in the curia. This papal action was only a
stage in the battle for the control of the Holy Office.961 Ferdinand was ready to proceed to the point of rupture with Rome
rather than allow the principle of appeals which would have reduced the power
of the suprema to impotence. Sixtus wrote a compromising reply, and a
year later, October, 1483, Ferdinand got all he asked for, and the appointment
of Torquemada was confirmed.

The royal management of the
Inquisition was also in danger of being fatally hampered by letters of
absolution, issued according to custom by the papal penitentiary, which were
valid not only in the court of conscience but in stopping public trials.
Ferdinand entered a vigorous protest against their use in Spain, when Sixtus,
1484, confirmed the penitentiary's right; but here also Sixtus was obliged to
retreat, at least in part, and Alexander VI. and later Clement VII., 1524, made
such letters invalid when they conflicted with the jurisdiction of the Spanish
tribunal. Spain was bent on doing things in its own way and won practical
independence of the curia.962

The principle, whereby in the
old Inquisition the bishops were co-ordinate in authority with the inquisitors
or superior to them, had to be abandoned in Spain in spite of the pope's
repeated attempts to apply it. Innocent VIII., 1487, completely subjected the
bishops to the inquisitorial organization, and when Alexander, 1494, annulled
this bull and required the inquisitors to act in conjunction with the bishop,
Ferdinand would not brook the change and, under his protection, the suprema and
its agents asserted their independence to Ferdinand.

Likewise, in the matter of
confiscations of property, the sovereign claimed the right to dictate their
distribution, now applying them for the payment of salaries to the inquisitors
and their agents, now appropriating them for the national exchequer, now for
his own use or for gifts to his favorites.

No concern of his reign, except
the extension of his dominions, received from Ferdinand more constant and
sympathetic attention than the deletion of heresy. With keen delight he
witnessed the public burnings as adapted to advance the Catholic faith. He
scrutinized the reports sent him by inquisitors and, at times, he expressed his
satisfaction with their services by gifts of money. In his will, dated the day
before his death, he enjoined his heir, Charles V., to be strenuous in
supporting the tribunal. As all other virtues, so this testament ran, "are
nothing without faith by which and in which we are saved, we command the
illustrious prince, our grandson, to labor with all his strength to destroy and
extirpate heresy from our kingdoms and lordships, appointing ministers,
God-fearing and of good conscience, who will conduct the Inquisition justly and
properly for the service of God and the exaltation of the Catholic faith, and
who will also have a great zeal for the destruction of the sect of
Mohammed."963 Without
doubt, the primary motive in the establishment of the tribunal was with
Ferdinand, and certainly with Isabella, religious.

There seems at no time to have
been any widespread revolt against the procedure of the Inquisition. In Aragon,
some mitigation of its rigors and rules was proposed by the Cortes of
Barcelona, 1512, such as the withdrawal from the inquisitors of the right to
carry weapons and the exemption of women from the seizure of their property, in
cases where a husband or father was declared a heretic, but Ferdinand and
Bishop Enguera, the Aragonese inquisitor-general, were dispensed by Leo X.,
1514, from keeping the oath they had taken to observe the rules. At Charles
V.'s accession, an effort was made to have some of the more offensive evils
abolished, such as the keeping of the names of witnesses secret, and in 1520
the Cortes of Valladolid and Corunna made open appeal for the amendment of some
of the rules. Four hundred thousand ducats were offered, presumably by conversos,
to the young king if he would give his assent, and, as late as 1528, the
kingdom of Granada, in the same interest, offered him 50,000 ducats. But the
appeals received no favorable action and, under the influence of Ximines, in
1517, the council of Castile represented to Charles that the very peace of
Spain depended upon the maintenance of the Inquisition. The cardinal wrote a
personal letter to the king, declaring that interference on his part would
cover his name with infamy.964

The most serious attempt to
check the workings of the Inquisition occurred in Saragossa and resulted in the
assassination of the chief inquisitor, Peter Arbues, an act of despair laid at
the door of the conversos. Arbues was murdered in the
cathedral Jan. 25, 1485, the fatal blow being struck from behind, while the
priest was on his knees engaged in prayer. He knew his life was threatened and
not only wore a coat of mail and cap of steel, but carried a lance. He lingered
twenty-four hours. Miracles wrought at the coffin vouched for the sanctity of
the murdered ecclesiastic. The sacred bell of Villela tolled unmoved by hands.
Arbues' blood liquefied on the cathedral floor two weeks after the deed. Within
two years, the popular veneration showed itself in the erection of a splendid
tomb to the martyr's memory and the Catholic Church, by the bull of Pius IX.,
June 29, 1867, has given him the honors of canonization. As the assassination
of the papal delegate, Peter of Castelnau, at the opening of the crusade
against the Albigenses, 1208, wrought to strengthen Innocent in his purpose to
wipe out heresy, even with the sword, likewise the taking off of Arbues only
tightened the grip of the Spanish Inquisition in Aragon. His murderers and all
in any way accessory to the crime were hunted down, their hands were cut off at
the portal of the cathedral and their bodies dragged to the market-place, where
they were beheaded and quartered or burnt alive.965

Next to the judicial murders
perpetrated by the Inquisition, its chief evil was the confiscation of estates.
The property of the conversos offered a tempting prize to the
cupidity of the inquisitors and to the crown. The tribunal was expected to live
from the spoils of the heretics. Torquemada's Instructions of 1484
contained specific rules governing the disposition of goods held by heretics.
There was no limit put upon their despoilment, except that lands transferred
before 1479 were exempted from seizure, a precaution to avoid the disturbance
of titles. The property of dead heretics, though they had lain in their graves
fifty years, was within the power of the tribunal. The dowries of wives were
mercifully exempted whose husbands were adjudged heretical, but wives whose
fathers were found to be heretics lost their dowries. The claims of the
children of heretic fathers might have been expected to call for merciful
consideration, but the righteousness of their dispossession had no more
vigorous advocates than the clergy. To such property, as the bishop of Simancas
argued, the old Christian population had a valid moral claim. The Instructions
of 1484 direct that, if the children were under age at the time of the
confiscation, they were to be distributed among pious families, and announced
it as the king's intention, in case they grew up good Christians, so to endow
them with alms, especially the girls, that they might marry or enter religion.966

The practice of confiscation
extended to the bedding and wearing apparel of the victims. One gracious
provision was that the slaves of condemned heretics should receive freedom.
Lands were sold at auction 30 days after their sequestration, but the low price
which they often brought indicates that purchasers enjoyed special privileges
of acquisition. Ferdinand and his successor, Charles, were profuse in their
disposition of such property. Had the moneys been used for the wars against the
Moors, as at first proposed by Torquemada, the plea might be made that the
tribunal was moved by unselfish considerations, but they were not. Not only did
Ferdinand take money for his bankrupt treasury, but he appropriated hunting
horses, pearls and other objects for his own use. The Flemish favorites of
Charles V., in less than ten months, sent home 1,100,000 ducats largely made up
of bequests derived from the exactions of the sacred court.967 Dr. Lea, whose merit it is to have shown the vast extent to which
the sequestration of estates was carried, describes the money transactions of
the Inquisition as "a carnival of plunder." It was even found to be
not incompatible with a purpose to maintain the purity of the faith to enter
into arrangements whereby, for a sufficient consideration, communities received
protection from inquisitorial charges. The first such bargain was made at
Valencia, 1482. The king, however, did not hesitate on occasion to violate his
pact and allow unfortunate conversos, who had paid for exemption, to
be arraigned and condemned. No law existed requiring faith to be kept with a
heretic. It also happened that condemned conversos
purchased
freedom from serving in the galleys or wearing the badge of heresy, the sanbenito.968

As early as 1485, Ferdinand and
Isabella were able to erect a royal palace at Guadalupe, costing 2,732,333
maravedis, with the proceeds of sequestrated property and, in a memorial
address to Charles V., 1524, Tristan de Leon asserted that these sovereigns had
received from the possessions of heretics no less than 10,000,000 ducats.
Torquemada also was able to spend vast sums upon his enterprises, such as the
conventual building of St. Thomas at Avila, which it was supposed were drawn
from the victims whom his religious fervor condemned to the loss of their goods
and often of their lives.969 When the
heretical mine was showing signs of exhaustion in Spain, the Spanish colonies
of Mexico and Peru poured in their spoils to enable the Holy Office to maintain
the state to which it had been accustomed. At an early period, it began to take
care for its own perpetuation by making investments on a large scale.970

After Ferdinand's death, the suprema's
power increased, and it demanded a respect only less than that which was
yielded to the crown. Its arrogance and insolence in administration kept pace
with the high pretension it made to sacredness of aim and divine authority. The
institution was known as the Holy Office, the building it occupied was the holy
house, casa santa, and the public solemnity at which the tribunal
appeared officially before the public and announced its decisions was called
the act of faith, auto de fe.

The suprema acted
upon the principle started by Paramo, that the inquisitor was the chief
personage in his district. He represented both the pope and king.971 On the one hand, he claimed the right to arrest at will and
without restriction from the civil authority; on the other, he demanded freedom
for his officials from all arrest and violence.

In trading and making exports,
the Holy Office claimed exemption from the usual duties levied upon the people
at large. Immunity from military service and the right to carry deadly weapons
by day and night were among other privileges to which it laid claim. A
deliverance of the Apostolic see, 1515, confirmed it in its right to arrest the
highest noble in the land who dared to attack its prerogatives or agents and,
in case of need, to protect itself by resort to bloodshed. Its jurisdiction
extended not only to the lower orders of the clergy, but also to members of the
orders, a claim which, after a long struggle, was confirmed by the edicts of
Pius IV. and V., 1559, 1561. A single class was exempted from the rules of its
procedure, the bishops. However, the exemption was rather apparent than real,
for the Holy Office exercised the right of arraigning bishops under suspicion
before the papal chair. The first cases of this kind were prelates of Jewish
extraction, Davila of Segovia, 1490, and Aranda of Calahorra, 1498. Both were
tried in Rome, the former being exonerated, and Aranda kept in prison in S.
Angelo, where he is supposed to have died, 1500. The most famous of the
episcopal suspects, the archbishop of Toledo, Bartholomew of Carranza,
1503-1576, was kept in prison for 17 years, partly in Spain and partly in Rome.
The case enjoyed a European reputation.

Carranza had the distinction of
administering the last rites to Charles V. and was for a time a favorite of
Philip II., but that sinister prince turned against him. Partly from jealousy
of Carranza's honors, as has been surmised, and chiefly on account of his
indiscretions of speech, the inquisitor-general Valdes decided upon the
archbishop's prosecution, and when his Commentary on the Catechism appeared in
Spanish, he was seized under authorization from the Apostolic see, 1559. For
two years the prelate was kept in a secret prison and then brought to trial.
After delay, Pius IV., 1564, appointed a distinguished commission to
investigate the case and Pius V. forced his transfer in 1567 to Rome, where he
was confined in S. Angelo for nine years. Under Pius V.'s successor, Gregory
XIII., Carranza was compelled to abjure alleged errors, suspended from his seat
for five years and remanded to confinement in a Roman convent, where he
afterwards died. The boldness and vast power of the Inquisition could have no
better proof than the indignity and punishment placed upon a primate of Spain,

The procedure of the Holy Office
followed the rules drawn by Torquemada, 1484, 1485, called the Instructions
of Seville, and the Instructions of Valladolid prepared by the same
hand, 1488 and 1498. These early codes were afterwards known as the Instructiones antiguas, and remained in force until superseded by the code of
1561 prepared by the inquisitor-general, Valdes.

Torquemada lodged the control of
the Inquisition in the suprema, to which all district
tribunals were subordinated. Permanent tribunals were located at Seville,
Toledo, Valladolid, Madrid (Corte), Granada, Cordova, Murcia Llerena, Cuenca,
Santiago, Logroño and the Canaries under the crown of Castile and at Saragossa,
Valencia, Barcelona and Majorca under the crown of Aragon.972

The officials included two
inquisitors an assessor or consulter on modes of canonical procedure, an
alguazil or executive officer, who executed the sentences of the tribunal,
notaries who kept the records, and censors or califadores
who pronounced
elaborate opinions on points of dispute. To these was added an official who
appraised and took charge of confiscated property. A large body of
subordinates, such as the familiars or confidential agents, complete
the list of officials. Laymen were eligible to the office of inquisitor,
provided they were unmarried, and a condition made for holding any of these
places was parity of blood, limpieza, freedom from all stain of
Morisco, Jewish or heretic parentage and of ancestral illegitimacy. This
peculiar provision led to endless investigation of genealogical records before
appointments were made.973

Each tribunal had a house of its
own, containing the audience chamber, rooms for the inquisitors, a library for
the records, le secreto de la Inquisicion,—a chamber of torture and
secret prisons. The familiars have a dark fame. They acted as
a body of spies to detect and report cases of heresy. Their zeal made them the
terror of the land, and the Cortes of Monzon, 1512, called for the reduction of
their number.

In its procedure, the
Inquisition went on the presumption that a person accused was guilty until he
had made out his innocence. The grounds of arrest were rumor or personal
denunciation. Informing on suspects was represented to the people as a
meritorious act and inculcated even upon children as a duty. The instructions
of 1484 prescribed a mitigated punishment for minors who informed on heretical
fathers, and Bishop Simancas declared it to be the sacred obligation of a son
to bring his father, if guilty, to justice.974 The spiritual offender was allowed an advocate. Secrecy was a
prime feature in the procedure. After his arrest, the prisoner was placed in
one of the secret prisons,—carceres secretas,—and rigidly deprived of all
intercourse with friends. All papers bearing upon his case were kept from him.
The names of his accusers and of witnesses for his prosecution were withheld.
In the choice of its witnesses the Inquisition allowed itself great liberty,
even accepting the testimony of persons under the Church's sentence of
excommunication, of Jews who remained in the Hebrew faith and of heretics. Witnesses
for the accused were limited to persons zealous for the orthodox faith, and
none of his relatives to the fourth generation were allowed to testify. Heresy
was regarded as a desperate disorder and to be removed at all costs. On the
other hand, the age of amenability was fixed at 12 for girls and 14 for boys.
The age of fourscore gave no immunity from the grim rigors of the exacting
tribunal.975

The charges, on which victims
were arraigned, included the slightest deflection in word or act from strict
Catholic usage, such as the refusal to eat pork on a single occasion, visiting
a house where Moorish notions were taught, as well as saying that the Virgin
herself and not her image effected cures, and that Jews and Moors would be
saved if they sincerely, believed the Jewish and the Moorish doctrines to be
true.976 Recourse
was had to torture, not only to secure evidence of guilt. Even when the
testimony of witnesses was sufficient to establish guilt, resort was had to
torture to extract a confession from the accused that thereby his soul might be
delivered from the burden of secret guilt, to extract information of
accomplices, and that a wholesome influence might be exerted in deterring
others from heresy by giving them an example of punishment. The modes of
torture most in use were the water ordeal and the garruche. In the water-cure,
the victim, tightly bound, was stretched upon a rack or bed, and with the body
in an inclined position, the head downward. The jaws were distended, a linen
cloth was thrust down the victim's throat and water from a quart jar allowed to
trickle through it into his inward parts.977 On occasion, seven or eight such jars were slowly emptied. The garrucha,
otherwise known as the strappade, has already been described. In
its application in Spain it was customary to attach weights to the feet and to
suspend the body in such a manner that the toes alone touched the ground, and
the Spanish rule required that the body be raised and lowered leisurely so as
to increase the pain.

The final penalties for heresy
included, in addition to the spiritual impositions of fasting and pilgrimage,
confiscation of goods, imprisonment, public scourging, the galleys, exile and
death. Confiscation and burning extended to the dead, against whom the charge
of heresy could be made out. At Toledo, July 25, 1485, more than 400 dead were
burnt in effigy. Frequently at the autos no living victims suffered. In
cases of the dead their names were effaced from their tombstones, that "no
memory of them should remain on the face of the earth except as recorded in our
sentence." Their male descendants, including the grandchildren, were
incapacitated from occupying benefices and public positions, from riding on
horseback, carrying weapons and wearing silk or ornaments.

The penalty of scourging was
executed in public on the bodies of the victims, bared to the waist, by the
public executioner. Women of 86 to girls of 13 were subjected to such
treatment. Galley labor as a mode of punishment was sanctioned by Alexander
VI., 1503. The sentence of perpetual imprisonment was often relaxed, either
from considerations of mercy or for financial reasons. Up to 1488, there had
been 5000 condemnations to lasting imprisonment.978

The saco bendito, or sanbenito, another characteristic feature of the Spanish
Inquisition, was a jacket of gray or yellow texture, furnished before and
behind with a large cross as prescribed by Torquemada. This galling humiliation
was aggravated by the rule that, after they were laid aside, the sanbenitos should be hung up in the churches, together with a record of the wearer's
name inscribed and his sentence. To avoid the shame of this public display,
descendants often sought to change their names, a practice the law soon
checked. The precedent for the sanbenito was found in the covering our
first parents wore to hide their nakedness, or in the sackcloth worn in the
early Church as a mark of penance.

The auto de fe,
the final act in the procedure of the Inquisition, shows the relentlessness of
this tribunal, and gave the spectators a foretaste of the solemnities of the
day of judgment. There heretics, after being tried by the inquisitorial court,
were exposed to public view,979and received the first official
notice of their sentence. The ceremonial took place on the public squares,
where platforms and staging were erected at municipal expense, and such
occasions were treated as public holidays. On the day appointed, the prisoners
marched in procession, led by Dominicans and others bearing green and white
crosses, and followed by the officials of the Holy Office. Arrived at the
square, they were assigned seats on benches. A sermon was then preached and an
oath taken from the people and also from the king, if present, to support the
Inquisition. The sentences were then announced. Unrepentant heretics were
turned over to the civil officers. Wearing benitos, inscribed with their name,
they were conducted on asses to the brasero, or place of burning, which was
usually outside the city limits, and consigned to the flames. The other
heretics were then taken back to the prisons of the Inquisition. Inquisitorial
agents were present at the burnings and made a record of them for the use of
the religious tribunal. The solemnities of the auto
de fe were
usually begun at 6 in the morning and often lasted into the afternoon.

Theoretically, the tribunal did
not pass the sentence of blood. The ancient custom of the Church and the canon
law forbade such a decision. Its authority ceased with the abandonment—or, to
use the technical expression, the relaxation—of the offender to the secular
arm. By an old custom in passing sentence of incorrigible heresy, it even
prayed the secular officer to avoid the spilling of blood and to exercise
mercy. The prayer was an empty form. The state well understood its duty, and
its failure to punish with death heretics convicted by the spiritual court was
punishable with excommunication. It did not presume to review the case, to take
new evidence or even to require a statement of the evidence on which the
sentence of heresy was reached. The duty of the secular officer was
ministerial, not judicial. The sentence of heresy was synonymous with burning
at the stake. The Inquisition, however, did not stop with turning heretics over
to the state, but, as even Vacandard admits, at times pronounced the sentence
of burning.980

So honorable to the state and to
religion were the autos de fe regarded that kings attended
them and they were appointed to commemorate the marriage of princes or their
recovery from sickness. Ferdinand was in the habit of attending them. On the
visit of Charles V. to Valencia, 1528, public exhibition was given at which 13
were relaxed in person and 10 in effigy. Philip II.'s marriage, in 1560, to
Isabella of Valois was celebrated by an auto in Toledo and, in 1564, when
this sovereign was in Barcelona, a public exhibition was arranged in his honor,
at which eight were sentenced to death. Such spectacles continued to be
witnessed by royal personages till 1701, when Philip V. set an example of
better things by refusing to be present at one.

The last case of an execution by
the Spanish Inquisition was a schoolmaster, Cayetano Ripoll, July 26, 1826. His
trial lasted nearly two years. He was accused of being a deist, and
substituting in his school the words "Praise be to God" for "Ave
Maria purissima." He died calmly on the gibbet after repeating the words,
"I die reconciled to God and to man."981

Not satisfied with putting
heretical men out of the world, the Inquisition also directed its attention to
noxious writings.982 At
Seville, in 1490, Torquemada burnt a large number of Hebrew copies of the
Bible, and a little later, at Salamanca, he burnt 6000 copies. Ten years later,
1502, Ferdinand and Isabella promulgated a law forbidding books being printed,
imported and sold which did not have the license of a bishop or certain
specified royal judges. All Lutheran writings were ordered by Adrian, in 1521,
delivered up to the Inquisition. Thenceforth the Spanish tribunal proved itself
a vigorous guardian of the purity of the press. The first formal Index,
compiled by the University of Louvain, 1546, was approved by the
inquisitor-general Valdes and the suprema, and ordered printed with a
supplement. This was the first Index Expurgatorius printed in Spain. All copies of
the Scriptures in Spanish were seized and burnt, and the ferocious law of 1558
ordered booksellers keeping or selling prohibited books punished with
confiscation of goods or death. Strict inquisitorial supervision was had over
all libraries in Spain down into the 19th century. Of the effect of this
censorship upon Spanish culture, Dr. Lea says: "The intellectual
development which in the 16th century promised to render Spanish literature and
learning the most illustrious in Europe was stunted and starved into atrophy,
the arts and sciences were neglected, and the character which Spain acquired
among the nations was tersely expressed in the current saying that Africa began
at the Pyrenees."

The "ghastly total" of
the victims consigned by the Spanish Inquisition to the flames or other punishments
has been differently stated. Precise tables of statistics are of modern
creation, but that it was large is beyond question. The historian, Llorente,
gives the following figures: From 1480-1498, the date of Torquemada's death,
8800 were burnt alive, 6500 in effigy and 90,004 subjected to other
punishments. From 1499-1506, 1664 were burnt alive, 832 in effigy and 32,456
subjected to other punishments. From 1507-1517, during the term of Cardinal
Ximines, 2536 were burnt alive, 1368 in effigy and 47,263 subjected to other
penalties. This writer gives the grand totals up to 1524 as 14,344 burnt alive,
9372 in effigy and 195,937 condemned to other penalties or released as
penitents. In 1524, an inscription was placed on the fortress of Triana
Seville, running: "In the year 1481, under the pontificate of Sixtus IV.
and the rule of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Inquisition was begun here. Up to
1524, 20,000 heretics and more abjured their awful crime on this spot and
nearly 1000 were burnt." From records still extant, the victims in Toledo
before 1501 are found to have numbered 297 burnt alive and 600 in effigy, and
5400 condemned to other punishment or reconciled. The documents, however, are
not preserved or, at any rate, not known from which a full estimate could be
made. In any case the numbers included thousands of victims burnt alive and
tens of thousands subjected to other punishments.983

The rise of the Spanish Inquisition
was contemporary with Spain's advance to a foremost place among the nations of
Europe. After eight centuries, her territory was for the first time completely
free from the government of the Mohammedan. The renown of her regiments was
soon to be unequalled. Spanish ships opened the highways of the sea and
returned from the New World freighted with its wealth. Spanish diplomacy was in
the ascendant in Italy. But the decay of her vital forces her religious zeal
did not check. Spain's Catholic orthodoxy was assured, but Spain placed herself
outside the current of modern culture and progress. By her policy of religious
seclusion and pride, she crushed independence of thought and virility of moral
purpose. One by one, she lost her territorial acquisitions, from the
Netherlands and Sicily to Cuba and the Philippines in the far Pacific. Heresy
she consumed inside of her own precincts, but the paralysis of stagnation
settled down upon her national life and institutions, and peoples professing
Protestantism, which she still calls heresy, long since have taken her crown in
the world of commerce and culture, invention and nautical enterprise. The
present map of the world has faint traces of that empire on which it was the
boast of the Spaniard of the 16th century that the sun never set. This
reduction of territory and resources calls forth no spirit of denunciation.
Nay, it attracts a sympathetic consideration which hopes for the renewed
greatness of the land of Ferdinand and Isabella, through the introduction of
that intellectual and religious freedom which has stirred the energies of other
European peoples and kept them in the path of progress and new achievement.

*Schaff, Philip, History of
the Christian Church, (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.) 1997.
This material has been carefully compared, corrected¸ and emended (according to
the 1910 edition of Charles Scribner's Sons) by The Electronic Bible Society,
Dallas, TX, 1998.

880 Fredericq, I. 155-160, II. 63 sqq. Another writer of the same clan
was Mary of Valenciennes, whose book was condemned by the Inquisition, about
1400, as a work of "incredible subtlety." It was mentioned by Gerson
in his tract on false and true visions. Fredericq, II. 188.

881 For a list of their errors, see Fredericq, I. 267-279. A sect of
free thinkers known as the Loists flourished in Antwerp in the 16th century.
Döllinger, II. 664 sqq., gives one of their documents.

885 Döllinger, II. 381, 407 sq. The first three volumes of Fredericq
contain the term Fraticelli only twice, III. 17, 225.

886 Vol. V., 1, p. 876 sqq. The Flagellants were also known as
Flagellatores, Cruciferi, Paenitentes, Disiciplinati, Battisti, etc., and in
German and Dutch as Geissler, Geeselaars, Cruusbroeders, Kreuzbrüder, etc. The
references under Geeselaars in Fredericq fill four closely printed pages of the
Index, III. 297-300.

894 Clement's bull is given by Fredericq, I. 199-201, and in
translation by Förstemann, p. 97 sqq. Du Fayt's sermon is full of interest, and
is one of the most important documents given by Fredericq, III. 28-37. Du Fayt
ascribed the Black Death to an infection of the air due to the celestial
bodies—infectionem
aeris creatam a corporibus coelestibus. The deliverance of the University of Paris is lost.
See Chartul. III. 655 sqq.

895 Fredericq, II. 116, etc. The magistrates, as at Tournay, sometimes
found it necessary to repeat their proclamations against the Flagellants as
often an three times.

900 Schneerganz speaks of the number of their hymns in manuscript in
Italian libraries as "exceedingly large." He gives a list of such
libraries and also a list of the published laude. See Runge, pp. 50-64.
It is not, however, to be supposed that more than a few were in popular use and
sung.

909 The bad effects of the delusion upon morals is given by
chroniclers, one of whom says that during one of the epidemics 100 unmarried
women became pregnant. See Fredericq, I. 231 sq., III. 41, etc. Other names
given to the Dancers were Chorizantes and Tripudiantes.

910 Döllinger, II. 365 sqq. Here the barbs,—uncles,—the
religious leaders of the Waldenses, are represented as making affidavit of the
tenets of their people.

913 See the bull in Hansen, Quellen, p. 18, and an extended
section, pp. 408 sqq., on the use of the term Vauderie for witchcraft.
In the 14th century it was used to designate the practice of unnatural crimes,
just as was the term Bougerie in France, which, at the first, was
applied to the Catharan heresy.

914 This document is given in part by Fredericq, III. 94-109, and in
full by Hansen, pp. 149-182. Its details are as disgusting as the imagination
could well invent.

915 Lempens pronounces the prosecution of witchcraft the greatest
crime of all times, das grösste Verbrechen aller Zeiten. Witches were called fascinaret,
strigimagae, lamiae, phytonissae, strigae, streges, maleficae, Gazarii, that is, Cathari, and Valdenses, etc. For the derivation of the
German term, Hexe, see J. Francke's discussion in Hansen, Quellen,
pp. 615-670.

916 In Protestant Scotland the iron collar and gag were used. The last
trial in England occurred in 1712. A woman was executed for witchcraft in
Seville in 1781 and another in Glarus in 1782. Dr. Diefenbach, in his Aberglaube,
etc., attempts to prove that the belief in witchcraft was more deepseated in
Protestant circles than in the Catholic Church. Funk, Kirchengesch., p. 419, Hefele, Kirchengesch., p. 522, and other Catholic
historians take care to represent the share Protestants had in the persecution
of witches as equal to the share of the Catholics.

920 Michelet, p. 9, says: "I unfalteringly declare that the witch
appeared in the age of that deep despair which the gentry of the Church
engendered. The witch is a crime of their own achieving." Döllinger, Papstthum,
p. 123, says that witchcraft in its different manifestations, from the 13th to
the 17th century, is "a product of the faith in the plenary authority of
the pope. This may seem to be a paradox, but it is not hard to prove."
Hoensbroech's language, I., 381, is warm but true, when he says, "In all
this period the pope was the patron and the prop of the belief in witchcraft,
spreading it and confirming it."

921 A translation of Gregory's bull, Vox rama, is given by Hoensbroech, I. 215-218. See Döllinger: Papstthum,
pp. 125, 144.

922 So, In 1326, John inveighed against those who cum morte foedus ineunt et
pactum faciunt cum inferno. For the text of this and other papal documents, see Hansen, Quellen,
pp. 1-37.

928 Gesch. der Papste, III. 266 sqq., Hergenröther-Kirsch, II. 1040
sq. Vacandard, Inquisition, p. 200, takes the same view and says
"Innocent assuredly had no intention of committing the Church to a belief
in the phenomena he mentions in his bull; but his personal opinion did have an
influence upon the canonists and Inquisitors of his day," etc.

931 Hoc
est commune omnium maleficarum spurcitias carnales cum daemonibus exercere,
Malleus II. 4.
The author goes into all the details of the demon's procedure, the demon as he
approaches men being known as the succubus, and women as the incubus. Many of the details are too vile to repeat. Such
passages of Scripture are quoted as Gen. vi. 2 and 1 Cor. xi. 10, which is made
to teach that the woman wears a covering on her head to guard herself against
the looks of lustful angels. The demons, in becoming succubi and incubi, are not actuated by carnal
lust, so the author asserts, but by a desire to make their victims susceptible
to all sorts of vices.

932 Many cases are given to show the efficacy of these preservatives.
For example, a man in Ravensburg, who was tempted by the devil in the shape of
a woman, became much concerned, and at last, recalling what a priest had said
in the pulpit, sprinkled himself with salt and at once escaped the devil's
influence.

935 See Hansen: Quellen, p. 423 sqq. Wyclif does not seem to
have had so low an opinion of woman as did the writers of the century after
him. And yet he says, Lat. Serm. II. 161, Femina super in malicia multos
viros ... veritas est quod natura feminea est virtute inferior, etc.

937 Turrecremata, the Spanish dogmatician and canonist, dissents from
the opinion that the flying women were led by Diana and Herodias, on the
rational grounds that Diana never existed and Herodias probably was never
permitted to leave hell.

940 Valdenses ydolatrae, Quellen, pp. 157, 165. The poet Martin
la Franc, secretary to Felix V., in his Champion
des dames,
about 1440, speaks of 10,000 witches celebrating a sabbat in the Valley of
Wallis. Six hundred of them were brought to confess they had cohabited with
demons. Quellen, 99-104.

941 The incident is told by that famous witch-inquisitor, Bernard of
Como, in his De strigiis. Hansen: Quellen, pp. 279-284.

943 Quellen, p. 131 sq. This medical expert declared that women
and men were often turned into toads and cats. When such a cat's paw was cut
off, it was found that the foot of the suspected witch was gone. With his own
eyes, this mediaeval practitioner says he saw such a woman burnt in Rome, and
he states that many such cases occurred in the papal metropolis. Hartlieb was
medical adviser to Duke Albert III. of Bavaria. His Buch aller
verbotenen Kunst, Unglaubens u. d. Zauberei, was written 1456.

944 Hansen devotes 60 pages of his Quellen to the title, date
and authors of the Malleus. An excellent German translation is by J. W.
R. Schmidt: Der Hexenhammer, Berlin, 3 vols., 1906.

947 Strix
sive de ludificatione daemonum, 1523. See Burckhardt-Geiger: Renaissance, Excursus,
II. 359-362. The official papal view at the close of the 16th century was set
forth by the canonist, Francis Pegna, d. in Rome 1612. He held an appointment
on the papal commission for the revision of Gratian's Decretals, and asserts
that the aerial flights and cohabitation of witches could be proved beyond all
possible doubt. See extracts from his Com. on Eymericus Directorium.
Hansen: Quellen, p. 358 sq.

948 Infessura, Tommasini's ed., p. 25. For another burning in Rome,
1442, Burckhardt-Geiger, II. 359. For witchcraft in Italy, see this author, II.
p. 255-264. Also the extensive lists of trials, 1245-1540, noted down in
Hansen's Quellen; the ecclesiastical trials, pp. 445-516; the civil, pp.
517-615. In 1623 Gregory XV. renewed the penalty of lifelong imprisonment for
making pacts with the devil.

949 Hansen: Quellen, pp. 467-472. For the notorious case of
Gilles de Rais, the reputed original Bluebeard, see Lea: Inq., III.
468-487.

950 For other figures, see Hansen: Zauberwahn, p. 532 sqq.,
Hoensbroech, I. 500 sqq., and Lecky, I. 29 sqq. Seven thousand are said to have
been burnt at Treves. In 1670, 70 persons were arraigned in Sweden and a large
number of them burnt.

951 Döllinger-Friedrich, pp. 130, 447. For Loos' recantation as given
by Delrio, see Phil. Trsll. and Reprints, III. In a letter, written in
1629, the chancellor of the bishop of Würzburg states that the week before a
beautiful maiden of 19 had been executed as a witch. Children of three and four
years, he adds, to the number of 300, were reported to have had intercourse with
the devil. He himself had seen children of seven and promising students of 12
and 16 put to death. Phil. Trsll., etc., III.

952 The transation taken from the Phila. Trsll. and Reprints,
vol. III.

955 Ferdinand was associated with his father, John of Navarre, in the
government of Aragon from the year 1469. The same year he was married to
Isabella, sister of Henry IV., king of Castile. At Henry's death, Isabella's
title to the throne was disputed by Juana who claimed to be a daughter of
Henry, but was popularly believed to be the child of Beltram de la Cueva and so
called La Beltraneja. The civil war, which followed, was brought to a close in
1479 by Juana's retirement to a convent, and the undisputed recognition of
Isabella. Ferdinand and Isabella's reign is regarded as the most glorious in
Spanish annals. Ferdinand's grandson, through his daughter Juana, Charles V., succeeded
to his dominions.

960 Hefele, in his Life of Cardinal Ximenes, p. 265 sqq., took
the position that the Spanish Inquisition was a state institution, Staatsanstalt,
pointing out that the inquisitor-general was appointed by the king, and the
Inquisitors proceeded in his name. Ranke, Die
Osmanen u. d. span. Monarchie inFürsten u. Völker, 4th ed., 1877, calls it
"a royal institution fitted out with spiritual weapons." On the other
hand, the Spanish historians, Orti y Lara and Rodrigo take the position that it
was a papal institution. Pastor takes substantially this view when he insists upon
the dominance of the religious element and the bull of Sixtus IV. authorizing
it. So, he says, erscheint d. span. Inquisition als
ein gemischtes Institut mit vorwiegend kirchlichem Charakter, 1st ed., II. 542-546, 4th ed.,
III. 624-630. Wetzer-Welte, VI. 777, occupies the same ground and quotes Orti y
Lara as saying, "The Inquisition fused into one weapon the papal sword and
the temporal power of kings." Dr. Lea emphasizes the mixed character of
the agency, and says that the chief question is not where it had its origin,
but which party derived the most advantage. It is, however, of much importance
for the history of the papacy as a divine or human institution to insist upon
its responsibility in authorizing and supporting the nefarious Holy Office. Funk
says that "the assumption that the Spanish Inquisition was primarily a
state institution does not hold good."

962 Lea, II. 116, etc., insists upon the double-dealing of the papacy,
from Sixtus IV. to Julius II., "who with one hand sold letters of
absolution and with the other declared them invalid by revocation." Sixtus'
bull of 1484 was confirmed by Paul III., 1549. Its claim, an infallible papacy
cannot well abandon.

963 Lea, I. 214. For Ferdinand's expressions of satisfaction with the
zeal shown in the burning of heretics, as after a holocaust at Valladolid,
September, 1509, see Lea, I. 189, 191, etc.

977 In Paris the usual method was to inject water into the mouth, oil
and vinegar also being used. The amount of water was from 9 to 18 pints. La
Croix: Manners, Customs and Dress of the M. A., N. Y. 1874, chapter on
Punishments, pp. 407-433.

980 Lea, III. 185 sq., quotes the sentence upon Mencia Alfonso, tried
at Guadalupe, 1485, which runs: "As a limb of the devil, she shall be
taken to the place of burning so that by the secular officials of this town
justice may be executed upon her according to the custom of these
kingdoms." Paul III., 1547, and Julius III., 1550, conferred upon clerics
the right of condemning to mutilation and death in cases where, as with the
Venetian government, delays were interposed in the execution of the
ecclesiastical sentence. Vacandard says, p. 180: "Some inquisitors,
realizing the emptiness of the formula, ecclesia abhorret a sanguine, dispensed with it altogether
and boldly assumed the full responsibility for their sentences. The Inquisition
is the real judge,—it lights the fires .... It is erroneous to pretend that the
Church had absolutely no part in the condemnation of heretics to death. Her
participation was not direct and immediate, but, even though indirect, it was
none the less real and efficacious." This author, p. 211, misrepresents
history when he makes the legislation of Frederick II. responsible for the
papal treatment of heresy. Innocent III. had been punishing the Albigenses to
death long before the appearance of Frederick's Constitutions.

981 The Spanish Inquisition was introduced into Sicily in 1487, where
it met with vigorous resistance from the parliament, and in Sardinia, 1492. In
the New World its victims were Protestants, conversos, bigamists and fornicators. The
Mexican tribunal was abolished in 1820, and that of Peru, the same year. As
late as 1774 a Bogota physician was tried "as the first and only one who
in this kingdom and perhaps in all America" had publicly declared himself for
the Copernican system.

983 See Hoensbroech, I. 139, quoting Llorente. Dr. Lea speaks of the
apparent tendency of early writers to exaggerate the achievements of the
"Holy Office," and calls in question, though with some hesitation,
Llorente's figures and the figures given by an early secretary of the tribunal,
Zurita, who records 4000 burnings and 30,000 reconciliations in Seville alone
before 1520. See Lea's figures, IV. 513-624. Father Gams, in his Kirchengesch.
Spaniens, reckons the number of those burnt, up to 1604, at 2000, but he
excludes from these figures the burnings for other crimes than heresy. See Lea,
IV. 517.